


The Small One

by NonbinaryRoyalty



Series: Pidge Gunderson [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (but there are things that could be triggering for those who have self harmed), (no one actually self harms), (please make sure you're in a good mental state if you have), Pidge - centric, TW: Self Harm, TW: trans slurs, agender pidge, nonbinary pidge
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-10 23:47:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15960152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NonbinaryRoyalty/pseuds/NonbinaryRoyalty
Summary: Pidge squashes their fear deep down inside of them, because they have to, they have to be there to protect their team who they’ve come to consider as their family. It's their turn to protect everyone else, because everyone else has gone through too much to deserve being hurt again, and so Pidge has to be there to protect them, because they couldn’t stand it if anything else happened to their family.or,If Coran and Acxa had taken a bit longer to rescue the team, what would have happened to Pidge?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So long story short I wanted to know what would have happened to Pidge in s7e3 if Coran and Acxa hadn't saved the day. I saw a few other fics like this, but none of them were completely satisfying to me, so here we are (also this is my first Voltron fic so don't get mad if I did a bad please). Pidge uses gender neutral pronouns when refering to themself, because I headcannon them as agender, but I also think that they don't really care at all what other people call them, so the team still uses she/her most of the time.
> 
> (also, I was serious about those trigger warnings. if you're in a bad mental state, reading this is probably not the best idea. wait till you're feeling okay)

“Where have you been, and what happened to Lotor?” Zethrid asked again. But the paladins were silent. There wasn’t a way to answer that. Not in a way that would satisfy her demands. “If you insist on maintaining this charade of ignorance, you leave us no choice but to apply pressure.”  
“Finally! Who’s our first victim?” asked Ezor with a smile that chilled Pidge to the bone.  
Not much scared them. There was almost always a way to reason their way out of any fear they happened to come accross. But Ezor couldn’t just be reasoned away like most things. She was very real and very dangerous and fully prepared to hurt anyone just because she felt like it. She was…..scary. Unconsciously, they curled in on themself a bit. It was enough to draw the attention of Zethrid.  
“You,” she said, pointing directly at Pidge. “I’d bet half my fleet this group of heros has a soft spot for the small one.”  
A sinking feeling, accompanied by a hitch in their breath, and a heart that seemed ready to beat right out of their chest. After a moment, they realized what it was. Fear. Real, true, intense fear that they hadn’t felt (not really, not like this) since seeing the newsreel about the failed Kerberos mission on tv.  
“Don’t you touch her!” Lance shouted, pulling Pidge from their spiraling thoughts and back to reality. Pidge realized what he was doing as Ezor stopped his poorly thought out attack with a well placed kick that sent him flying across the small cell. The idiot was stupidly trying to protect them, and now there was a gun pointed at his head.  
Pidge took a deep breath, doing their best to lock their fear away, far away, deep down where it couldn’t resurface. They weren’t the only one there. All their teammates - their family - were here too. Suddenly, Pidge was almost grateful to Zethrid for choosing them to be the victim. They would much rather face whatever horrors the two would inflict on them than allow their family to be put in danger again.  
“Your defiance is adorable. And so very misguided,” said Zethrid.  
“Leave us alone!” Pidge shouted, in an attempt to bring their captor’s attention back to them. They couldn’t let them hurt Lance, or any of the others. They had to be smart enough to protect them.  
To their relief, and terror, it worked, and the two aliens refocused on their chosen victim. Pidge continued to glare at them, trying to be brave. But then Ezor’s strange appendage thing snapped forward, and grabbed them. Before they could process what was happening, Ezor was holding them by the throat, much higher off the ground than they could reach.  
“Pidge!” Hunk shouted, fear evident in his voice. But it was okay, this was their plan it would be okay.  
“Let her go!” said Keith, but one of the sentries had a gun pointed at him too. Pidge kicked, and struggled to the best of their ability, because they couldn’t let them hurt anyone else, but there wasn’t much they could do. Not when they were being held three feet off the ground against a metal wall, and they really couldn’t breathe like this.  
“Answers,” Ezor insisted. Pidge didn’t have anything to give her, but it would be okay, because it had to be okay, because they were the best option for this situation, and they had a plan.  
“We told you! He’s dead!” Keith said angrily. No Keith, why couldn’t he just let them focus on Pidge so no one else would have to get hurt because the rest of them were so broken already?  
“If he’s dead, then how are you alive?” asked Zethrid. No one could answer her. They weren’t sure they knew the answer themself, and nothing they could have given her would have made a difference, because it was Pidge’s turn. It was their turn to protect the others because thats what was fair and that’s how teams worked.  
“Still not talking, eh? Good.”  
Ezor threw Pidge against the wall, knocking the wind out of them. She didn’t give them any time to recover though, immediately using her appendage to pull her back, until she was holding them by their throat again, and they were coughing, but they couldn’t breathe, and they couldn’t think, and they didn’t know what to do.  
“Y’know, I like torturing the young ones best,” Ezor said quietly to Pidge. “They’re always the hardest to break, and it gets such a reaction from everyone else.”  
And maybe it was something about her glee at Pidge’s pain, or the fact that she still couldn’t breathe, or how her back and neck ached, or the shouts of protest from the others, but Pidge was starting to feel that overwhelming fear rise back up. But then suddenly their weight was being shifted, and Zethrid was holding Pidge by their wrists, and it hurt, hurt like they were going to pop right off.  
“Please just leave her alone!” Pidge heard, and it took them a moment, to place the voice, because it sounded so broken and scared, but it was Shiro. Shiro shouldn’t sound like that, because he never did, he was always strong, and besides, it was Pidge’s turn to protect him, he didn’t deserve to be hurt by the Galra any more. Zethrid looked at him.  
“You can end its suffering whenever you choose. Tell us what we want to know, and we’ll let it go.”  
The ‘it's’ hurt worse than anything else had thus far, but they squashed down the feelings just like they always did. They had too. For everyone’s sake.  
“Please. We’ve told you everything we know. She’s just a child! Please leave her alone!” That was Shiro again, and normally Pidge would have been insulted, because they weren’t a child. Maybe they were when they had started, but they’d been through a war. And no matter their age, they weren’t a child anymore, and hadn’t been for a long time.  
Ezor continued her asault on Pidge, using her as though she was a punching bag. Striking their face, their arms, their torso, anything. Pidge vaguely knew that they were shouting in pain with each blow. Probably the others were two, but then Ezor hit their gut, and they were coughing, and retching, and they still couldn’t breathe.  
“Are you ready to talk yet?” asked Ezor, still maintaining that cruelly cheerful demeanor that was more terrifying than any threats or shouting. Pidge couldn’t answer, too focused on dragging air into their lungs.  
“We don’t know anything!” Keith was shouting again. He was being physically held back by a guard, Pidge noticed. Then Pidge realized all of their friends were being held back by guards. They wondered when there had gotten to be so many; where they’d come from.  
“Maybe you’re being to kind, Ezor,” Zethrid suggested.  
“You’re right,” she answered, and pulled out a knife. “Maybe we should see how much blood it needs to survive.”  
Zethrid dropped Pidge to the floor like a sack of potatoes. Pidge would have felt scared. Should have felt scared. Should have felt anything at all. There was no way out of this. The team had told them everything they knew, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy them. And now they were all being held back by guards, guards with guns, and they could get hurt, but they wouldn’t if they would just trust Pidge, and let them get hurt so no one else had to.  
Ezor pulled off their gauntlet, and pulled back the sleeve of the stretchy mesh suit underneath. Pidge was too weak to protest as Ezor slit the outside of their wrist open. It was a small cut, not big, or deep enough to be worried about, and in the wrong place to hurt a major artery. Red blood beaded the slit like some kind of messed up bracelet.  
“Ooooh! It bleeds red, Zethrid!” Ezor said, delighted.  
“Beautiful!” Zethrid complimented, as Ezor cut again, and again.  
Pidge could hear shouting. Could hear the rest of the team struggling and fighting. They should be fighting. But instead, they found themselves transfixed on the cuts, and the blood dripping from them. More and more, as Ezor became less timid, and began applying more pressure.  
After the outside of their forearm had been completely sliced up, Ezor turned her attention to the inside. In the back of their mind, Pidge knew that this was much more dangerous, especially if Ezor planned on continuing her trend of making the cuts bigger. Pidge would bleed out if this continued.  
Luckily, before anything too important could be damaged, an explosion rumbled from somewhere else on the ship.  
“Hull Breach in hanger one,” a mechanical voice rang through the ship. “Lockdown sequence initiated.”  
“Enough of this!” Zethrid said, holding Pidge up by the throat once again. “Tell us what we want to know, or it dies!”  
“We’ve told you everything we know! Just let them go!” Hunk pleaded. Pidge realized that he was crying, which wasn’t right. This was part of their plan. Pidge needed to get hurt so everyone else could be okay.  
Another tremor ran through the ship.  
“Have it your way,” Zethrid said, nodding at Ezor.  
Before anyone had really processed that she had moved, Pidge cried out in pain, a knife embedded in their stomach. Vaguely, Pidge was aware of one, or maybe several of their teammates crying out in shock and horror, and Zethrid letting go, rushing out of the room with the guards, as they crumpled to the ground like a broken doll. Mostly, though, all they were aware of was the fire in their stomach that seemed to be spreading and worsening with every breath.  
“We’ll be back to play some more later,” Ezor said with that sickeningly happy tone. Pidge should have been scared. They didn’t want their friends to be in danger. Not anymore. Not ever again. But at the moment, all they could really think of was how hard it was to breathe.  
Faces. There were faces above them. They weren’t sure who. Everything was blurry, and their brain felt foggy, and they really needed to breathe, didn’t they? They felt darkness calling to them, and they were so tired, they just wanted to sleep, so they did.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof people like this for some reason I guess here's another chapter (also the cryopod they mention is the one they put Shiro's clone in in case you were wondering)

As soon as Ezor, Zethrid, and their guards left, the team was all over Pidge.  
“What do we do?” Lance was asking.  
“Will she be alright?” asked Romelle.  
“Of course she won’t! She just got stabbed in the gut!” Keith snapped at her.  
“Guys she’s losing a lot of blood,” Hunk pointed out nervously, and he was right. Even without the stab wound and the ominous red stain growing ever larger on her front, her arm was still bleeding a copious amount.  
“Everyone step back,” Shiro said. “Crowding her isn’t going to do her any good.”  
“Shiro, she’s fallen unconscious. I don’t know enough about human anatomy. Is that a bad sign?” Allura asked, eyes full of fear.  
“Yeah, that’s a pretty bad sign.” Shiro’s mind went into overdrive trying to figure out a plan. “Keith, with me. Everyone else, try to find a way out of here. Keith and I will try to slow her blood flow as much as we can, but she won’t last long unless we get her to a cryopod.”  
“Will we even be able to?” Allura asked in a small voice.  
“What do you mean?” asked Lance.  
“The Castle of Lions is gone. The lions still aren’t at full power, we don’t have any way to recharge them, and we only have one half functional cryopod left. What if we can’t save her?”  
“We will,” Keith said in a tone that left no room for argument.  
He and Shiro began applying pressure to Pidge’s wounds, but after a few minutes, it became apparent that they weren’t doing much to help her. If they just had some excess fabric, Keith thought, something they could use to make makeshift bandages. But armor wasn’t exactly made of the right material for bandages, and everyone was wearing theirs except….  
“Romelle, can you come here please?” Keith asked.  
“What is it?” she asked.  
“We need bandages, or something, and you’re the only one here who isn’t wearing armor.” Romelle nodded, evidently seeing what he was getting at.  
She removed the belt from her tunic, and then, with the help of Keith and Shiro, ripped of her long, billowing sleeves. Keith, with Shiro’s guidance, managed to use the belt as a tourniquet while Romelle wrapped one of her sleeves around Pidge’s wrist. When that was finished, Keith used the remaining sleeve to wrap around Pidge’s torso. The process took longer than Keith would have liked, considering they were all still handcuffed, but they managed.  
“Sorry about your tunic,” Shiro said once they were done.  
“It’s fine. I would much rather have a ruined shirt and a living friend,” Romelle responded.  
The makeshift bandages did seem to slow the blood flow, but there was still the very obvious problem of Pidge having been stabbed.They needed to get her out of there and into the cryopod as fast as possible.  
“The next time that door opens, overwhelm the guard,” said Krolia. Alarms were blaring. Keith didn’t know what it was, but he hoped it had something to do with Coran getting them out of there.  
Those who weren’t tending to Pidge’s wounds split up on both sides of the door, in preparation for an ambush. Everyone shared a grim look. They would get out of there. They had to get out of there. For Pidge.  
A shout was heard, followed by the sound of a body hitting the metal floor. The door opened, and the paladins looked out to see what had happened. On top of the guard’s unconscious body, were the space mice.  
Keith didn’t know how they’d overpowered the guard, or how they’d managed to open the door, but he didn’t really care either. He was just thankful that they’d managed it.  
“Thank goodness you’re here!” said Allura. The mice responded with several shrill squeaks. “What?” More sqeaks. “Where?”  
“What are they saying?” asked Hunk.  
“Coran’s trying to rescue us. And he’s got help! Acxa,” Allura said, turning to Keith.  
“What?” asked Keith in complete confusion.  
“Look, it doesn’t matter. Right now we need to get Pidge out of here,” said Shiro. “Keith, can you carry her?”  
Keith nodded. His head was still spinning from this recent development, but he pushed the thoughts of confusion out of his mind, instead focusing on gathering up Pidge’s small form into his arms. He almost felt sick from her lack of response. Normally, she hated it when anyone even suggested carrying her. The only time she had ever willingly allowed it was when she hurt her leg on a mission, and could not actually stand, and even then, she was complaining the whole way. Now, however, she made no such protests.  
“Lets find Coran, and get out of here,” said Shiro.  
They ran through the corridors that all seemed to blend together, following the instructions of Allura’s space mice, until they found him attempting to challenge a huge cyborg-pirate to a duel.  
“Jokes on you! I got you right where I want you!” he was saying, before swinging his fists harmlessly.  
Allura used her shapeshifting abilities to grow twice her normal size, and punched the pirate from behind, knocking him out.  
“That’s for Pidge!” she shouted at him, and kicked him a few more times for good measure.  
“See? You got lucky,” Coran said to him, before turning from purple to his normal hue, and promptly collapsing. Allura shrank back to her normal size, and helped Lance, who was helping Coran back up.  
“Coran, where’s Acxa?” Keith asked.  
“I don’t know. Where am I?” Coran responded. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Keith realized that he probably had a concussion or something (if alteans could even get concussions), but he didn’t have time to dwell on it.  
“Are you okay?” asked Shiro.  
“Never better. Now lets get our belmards and hayards,” Coran answered.  
“Okay, thats a no, but we gotta go now,” Lance said. “We don’t know how much longer Pidge has.”  
“Is something wrong, Princess?” Coran asked Lance, who didn’t respond. They had to hurry. A few confusing twists and turns later, they made it to the room with their helmets and bayards.  
“Do you think there’s a switch on this thing?” asked one of the guards, holding Pidge’s bayard.  
The sight made Keith’s blood boil. Maybe if she were okay, if it hadn’t been Pidge’s bayard, he would have been rational about it. Maybe he would have listened to what Lance was saying about weapons and strategies. Instead he turned to the closest person, who happened to be Allura, and muttered “here,” while shoving Pidge’s unconscious body into her arms.  
Without needing to think, he summoned his bayard, and charged the pirates, taking both of them down quickly. He grabbed his helmet, and turned to the others.  
“Lance, lead the way. Keep the team together. Get Pidge to the cryopod,” he said.  
“Wait, where are you going?” Lance asked.  
“To find Acxa. I’ll meet up with you soon,” Keith answered, before turning, and running down the hallway.

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo yeah, there you have it. Let me know if you're interested in more. Constructive criticism is appreciated :)


End file.
